This invention relates to a solely patient mounted and supported constant monitoring suction stethoscopic and radio transmitter system and remote radio receiver and speaker. This system allows the attending professional anesthesiologist and staff members to be totally free of any physical connection to a particular patient or to the stethoscope supported by and connected to the chest of the patient except by radio waves transmitted from said radio transmitter to the remote radio receiver.
Today when an infant is born the only way to monitor cardiorespiratory function is to hold a stethoscope on the infant's chest or feel the pulsations of the umbilical cord. The only person who knows the results of these tests is the person listening with the stethoscope or holding the cord. Unfortunately, resuscitating a newborm requires the nurse or physician doing the resuscitation to use both hands to suction the infant, help it breathe and do other things necessary for resuscitation, so they cannot directly observe the cardiorespiratory status. An EKG could be attached to the infant and its sounds monitored by distant observers, but it tells nothing of therespiratory status of the infant.
In the past, such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,517,664, devices for monitoring blood pressure, pulse and respiration during anesthesia, having a two-way valve in which the passage from a blood pressure acoustic pickup to the earpiece is always open, but a pressure activated valve closes off the passage from a chestpiece to the earpiece automatically in response to inflation of the blood pressure cuff have been proposed. Such devices, connect the anesthesiologist physically to the patient, limiting his usefulness and freedom to attend to other duties. The anesthesiologist needs to be free to move in order to best serve the patient. This is especially true after the birth of a child when the anesthesiologist has two patients to attend.
The disclosure in U.S. Pat. No. 3,513,832 relates to a monitoring apparatus comprising a thermistor probe for insertion into the nostril of a small animal, a skin contact microphone, both being connected via electrical cables to an amplifer arranged to simultaneously and selectively audibly indicate the respiratory and the cardiovascular functions of the animal to the listener. Using a cuff and gauge, systolic and diastolic blood pressure can also be monitored. This device connected the patient by an electrical line to a speaker system.
Further, the invention disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,669,465, a device for indicating the cessation of cardiac function, employs a flexible tube for transmitting the heart sounds to a microphone. The present invention seeks to eliminate the danger of diminishing the acoustic strength of the heart signal caused by tubing.